FOREIGN.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 263, 21 May 1866, Page 2

FOREIGN.

THE LATE JAMAICA OUTBBEAK. The Boyal Commission of Inquiry commenced their labors on. January 25, and were expected to terminate their sittings on March 7. They have examined a great many witnesses, and among them his .Excellency Governor Eyre, whose testimony was looked forward to by the whole country with great anxiety. ' So far, however, the oral and documentary evidence he has given before the commission has not advanced him one step beyond the position in which he was placed by his despatches to the Secretary of State. The commission have declined to allow the barristers, Messrs Gorrie and Payne, to cross-examine witnesses. These gentlemen appeared on behalf of Messrs Gordon and others. The occurrences of the first three days, that is the outrages committed by the negroes, have been fully established, with the exception that many of the stories about the mutilation of the bodies of the murdered .gentlemen have not been supported — such, for instance, •as the Baron Kettelhodt's brains having been scooped out, mixed with rum, and drunk by some of the rebels, the ripping up of the bowels of Mr Trice, ana the cutting out of the tongue of the Rev. Mr Herschell. The witnesses appearing before the commission in the first instance were those for the most part who testified to the measures of reprisal adopted by the Government. They brought to light some rather startling facts, among others that the whips used for flogging rebels were made partly of piano wire, that with these instruments of torture women were flogged, that in some places people were hanged and shot without any form of trial whatever, and that the provost-marshal and others were apparently guilty of acts of wanton cruelty. The Attorney- General, in his evidence before the commission, having referred to the circumstances under which the news of the disturbances first reached him, and *;he authority under which martial law was proclaimed in the island, went on to speak as follows : — "As to the outbreak, my own opinion is that there was a great deal of personal ill-feeling in tit. Thomas-in.-the-East, arising from the different views— -parochial, political, and otherw ise — among the gentry, wnich by sympathy was communicated to the lower orders j then there was a law-

i suit between the baron and' Mr Cknfdon, and in my opinion that was the spark that set the fire-blazing. I believe there has been a general discontent throughout the whole island for the last four or five years among the people, and disaffection to the government— -not' disloyalty to the Crown, but discontent with their betters as to their condition.' Mr Jackson, a stipendiary magistrate of St. Thomas-in-theJßast, stated in his examination that the people in St. Thomas-in-tlie-East were most assuredly dissatisfied with the administration of justice. The dissatisfaction, in his opinion was well-grounded. there was for hearing a case in which the evidence unfavorably affected parties possessing the sympathy of the local magistrates, the latter prevented justice being done by declining to attend in numbers sufficient to form a court. The complainant,- after attending day after day, and seeing no hope of obtaining a hearing, eventually absented himself, and the charge fell to the ground through want of evidence. Similar testimony was given Jby Mr Justice Ker. : . The arrest of Provost-Marshal Bamsay on the charge of murdering a man named Marschall, by ordering him to be flogged, has taken place. The Times correspondent thus describes the arrest : — - "A warrant for the apprehension of MriGrordon D. Eamsay was issued by Mr Eussell, Eegistrar of the Court of Chancery, and a magistrate of the county in which Spanish Town is situated, at the instance of the friends of the deceased man, and upon an information ' sworn by Mr Lake, lately reporter of the Colonial Standard, who was present when^ the execution took place. Mr Bainsay was arrested the, same afternoon, and was taken, not before the magistrate who had issued the warrant, but before another justice, named Dr Land, who immediately admitted him to bail, requiring only his own recognisances in £400 and that of two sureties in £200 each, and merely binding him over to appear on March 6 next, without fixing any place at which he is to appear. The course which was adopted by Dr Land has excited a good deal of observation." ' . The report founded upon the voluminous evidence taken before Sir H. Storks and his colleagues will be a work of time, and the royal commissioners are not expected back in England before the middle of. May, Upon the whole, it is believed that the fact of unnecessary cruelty on the part of the authorities is established hj the evidence. The special commissioner of oyer and terminer, sitting at Kingston for the trial of political prisoners, has disposed of the charges against several persons. Mr Sydney Levien, the editor and proprietor of the County Union newspaper, who had been convicted of the publication of a seditious libel in the form of certain articles in that journal, has been sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment, and Thomas Harry, a shoemaker, and the Rev! J. H. Crole, a Baptist minister, who had been found guilty of the use of seditious language at the Underhill meetings, have each been sent to prison for six weeks. The Eev. Edward Palmer, also a Baptist minister, in connection with the society in London, and G-oldson, an ex-sergeant of police, have been convicted of similar offences, and have oeen sentenced, the former to 14 days, and the latter to two months' imprisonment.